AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Book: Trump said of virus, 'I wanted to always play it down'
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump talked privately about the severity of the coronavirus threat even as he was telling the nation the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu and insisting the government had it totally under control, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call with Woodward. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis. His comments were recorded by Woodward, and audio has been released.
For the White House, the book serves as an unwelcome return to a focus on Trump’s handling of the pandemic just as he is trying to project that the virus is under control and as he is eager to see a return to normal activity leading up to the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Trump told Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic."
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Official claims pressure to alter Homeland Security intel
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Department of Homeland Security official said in a whistleblower complaint released Wednesday that he was pressured by more senior officials to suppress facts in intelligence reports that President Donald Trump might find objectionable, including information about Russian interference in the election and the rising threat posed by white supremacists.
The official, Brian Murphy, alleged that senior DHS officials also pressed him to alter reports so they would reflect administration policy goals and that he was demoted for refusing to go along with the changes and for filing confidential internal complaints about the conduct.
Murphy, a former FBI agent and Marine Corps veteran, was demoted in August from his post as principal deputy under secretary in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. He is seeking to be reinstated in a complaint filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General.
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released the complaint, which he said contained “grave and disturbing” allegations. He said Murphy has been asked to give a deposition to Congress as part of an investigation into intelligence collection by DHS related to its response to protests in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere.
“We will get to the bottom of this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American people, and put a stop to the politicization of intelligence," the California Democrat said.
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'Unprecedented' Pacific Northwest fires burn 100s of homes
ESTACADA, Ore. (AP) — Windblown wildfires raging across the Pacific Northwest destroyed hundreds of homes in Oregon, the governor said Wednesday, warning: “This could be the greatest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in our state’s history."
Firefighters struggled to contain and douse the blazes fanned by 50 mph (80 kph) wind gusts and officials in some western Oregon communities gave residents “go now” orders to evacuate, meaning they had minutes to flee their homes.
The destructive blazes were burning in a large swath of Washington state and Oregon that rarely experiences such intense fire activity because of the Pacific Northwest's cool and wet climate.
The fires trapped firefighters and civilians behind fire lines in Oregon and leveled an entire small town in eastern Washington. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown warned that the devastation could be overwhelming from the fires that exploded Monday during a late-summer wind storm.
“Everyone must be on high alert,” Brown said. “The next several days are going to be extremely difficult.”
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Think 2020's disasters are wild? Experts see worse in future
A record amount of California is burning, spurred by a nearly 20-year mega-drought. To the north, parts of Oregon that don’t usually catch fire are in flames.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic’s 16th and 17th named tropical storms are swirling, a record number for this time of year. Powerful Typhoon Haishen lashed Japan and the Korean Peninsula this week. Last month it hit 130 degrees in Death Valley, the hottest Earth has been in nearly a century.
Phoenix keeps setting triple-digit heat records, while Colorado went through a weather whiplash of 90-degree heat to snow this week. Siberia, famous for its icy climate, hit 100 degrees earlier this year, accompanied by wildfires. Before that Australia and the Amazon were in flames.
Amid all that, Iowa’s multi-billion dollar derecho — bizarre straight-line winds that got as powerful as a major hurricane — barely went noticed.
Freak natural disasters — most with what scientists say likely have some kind of climate change connection — seem to be everywhere in the crazy year 2020. But experts say we’ll probably look back and say those were the good old days, when disasters weren’t so wild.
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NIH: Halted vaccine study shows 'no compromises' on safety
WASHINGTON (AP) — The suspension of a huge COVID-19 vaccine study over an illness in a single participant shows there will be “no compromises” on safety in the race to develop the shot, the chief of the National Institutes of Health told Congress on Wednesday.
AstraZeneca has put on hold studies of its vaccine candidate in the U.S. and other countries while it investigates whether a British volunteer's illness is a side effect or a coincidence.
“This ought to be reassuring,” NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said before a Senate committee. “When we say we are going to focus first on safety and make no compromises, here is Exhibit A of how that is happening in practice.”
Scientists have been scrambling to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus since the outbreak began, and the U.S. has launched the world's largest studies — final-stage testing of three leading candidates, with three more trials set to come soon that will each recruit 30,000 test subjects.
Public health experts are worried that President Donald Trump will pressure the Food and Drug Administration to approve a vaccine before it is proven to be safe and effective, a concern senator after senator echoed on Wednesday.
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Boy's shooting raises questions about police crisis training
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A police shooting that wounded a 13-year-old autistic boy in Salt Lake City is revealing shortfalls in the way officers respond to a mental health crisis, an advocacy group said Wednesday, a part of policing that's facing renewed scrutiny during nationwide protests over brutality by law enforcement.
Similar questions are being raised in Rochester, New York, following the death of a Black man whose brother called police about his unusual behavior shortly after a mental health evaluation. It comes as demonstrators have urged cities to “defund the police” and shift money to social services instead.
In Utah, the boy survived with serious injuries. He appears to be white based on a photo posted online by his mother, Golda Barton, although police have not provided his race. Barton says she called 911 on Friday night because he was having a breakdown and she needed help from a crisis-intervention officer.
The Salt Lake City officers who came were not specialists in crisis intervention but had some mental health training, and they ended up shooting the boy as he ran away because they believed he made threats involving a weapon, authorities said. There was no indications he had a weapon.
An officer trained in crisis response would have handled the situation differently, focusing on deescalation and avoiding shouting or using sirens, which can be disorienting, said Sherri Wittwer, board president of CIT Utah, a nonprofit that provides crisis intervention training for law enforcement.
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Teacher deaths raise alarms as new school year begins
O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — Teachers in at least three states have died after bouts with the coronavirus since the dawn of the new school year, and a teachers' union leader worries that the return to in-person classes will have a deadly impact across the U.S. if proper precautions aren't taken.
AshLee DeMarinis was just 34 when she died Sunday after three weeks in the hospital. She taught social skills and special education at John Evans Middle School in Potosi, Missouri, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis.
A third-grade teacher died Monday in South Carolina, and two other educators died recently in Mississippi. It's unclear how many teachers in the U.S. have become ill with COVID-19 since the new school year began, but Mississippi alone has reported 604 cases among school teachers and staff.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said schools need guidelines such as mandatory face coverings and strict social distancing rules to reopen safely.
“If community spread is too high as it is in Missouri and Mississippi, if you don’t have the infrastructure of testing, and if you don’t have the safeguards that prevent the spread of viruses in the school, we believe that you cannot reopen in person,” Weingarten said.
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Justice Dept. push into Trump case could prompt dismissal
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended the Justice Department's move to intervene in a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, even as experts were deeply skeptical of the federal government's effort to protect the president in a seemingly private dispute.
The Justice Department’s action is “a normal application of the law. The law is clear. It is done frequently," Barr said at an unrelated news conference in Chicago.
He added, “The little tempest that is going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live.”
But experts said it's far from clear that the conduct at issue — whether Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll, a writer who accused him of raping her at a New York luxury department store in the 1990s — has anything to do with his White House duties. The department's move is likely to have an ancillary benefit for Trump in delaying the case, but administration lawyers have a tough task at hand trying to argue that the president was acting in his official capacity when he denied Carroll's allegations last year, experts say.
“I wouldn’t make such an argument, and if a president approached me, I would say, ‘Don’t,’” said Stuart Gerson, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Division in President George H.W. Bush’s administration when Barr was attorney general for the first time.
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AP Exclusive: Pence to attend event hosted by QAnon backers
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence and top officials from President Donald Trump’s campaign are slated to attend a Montana fundraiser next week hosted by a couple who have expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an event invitation obtained by The Associated Press and a review of social media postings.
The hosts of the fundraiser, Caryn and Michael Borland, have shared QAnon memes and retweeted posts from QAnon accounts, their social media activity shows. The baseless conspiracy theory posits that Trump is fighting entrenched enemies in the government and also involves satanism and child sex trafficking.
Beyond Pence, the Sept. 14 fundraiser in Bozeman, Montana, is expected to draw influential figures in the president's orbit including Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump fundraising official who is dating Donald Trump Jr., GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee finance chairman Todd Ricketts and RNC co-chairman Tommy Hicks Jr., the event invitation shows.
While many Republicans have dismissed QAnon, the fundraiser is another sign of how the conspiracy theory is gaining a foothold in the party. Trump has hailed Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, another QAnon supporter, as a “future Republican star.” The president has refused to condemn QAnon, recently telling reporters that the conspiracy theory is “gaining in popularity” and that its supporters “like me very much.”
Representatives for Pence declined to comment on the fundraiser, though the vice president has previously called QAnon a “conspiracy theory.”
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Oscars diversity criteria 'not about exclusion' say leaders
Any change to the Oscars is going get people talking, so the leaders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were not exactly surprised that the new best picture inclusion standards became a trending topic on social media as soon as they were announced Tuesday night.
“Change doesn’t come without some variation of views,” said Paramount Pictures CEO Jim Gianopulos, who co-headed the task force behind the criteria with film producer DeVon Franklin. “Nothing is absolutely perfect, but this is a very progressive effort to make change.”
Starting with the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, best picture nominees will have to meet specific requirements addressing gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and disability in front of and behind the camera in order to qualify. Films must comply with two of four broad representation categories: On screen; among the crew; at the studio; and in opportunities for training and advancement.
Some said they went too far and accused the new rules of inhibiting art and artists with quotas. Others, like Stacy L. Smith, director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said they didn’t go far enough.
Smith said she could find few Oscar nominees from the past 20 years that didn’t already meet the new standards.